Everything I know about America I learned at Community College

Chapter 1: Who are Community College Students?

If I gave multiple choice answers to the question asked above, would you expect to see choices like this?

a. poor people

b. minorities

c. immigrants

d. kids who couldn’t get into “college” (i.e., the expensive school everyone wants to get into as defined by one’s peer group)

e. kids who don’t know what they want to do so their parents make them take classes anyway

f. kids who messed up their first attempt at college

g. all of the above

Of course, if you chose “all of the above,” you would be correct. But, that same answer would also be correct for almost any four-year public college or university in the United States. Community colleges simple have “more” of the above. Not only that, community colleges tend to do more for the students described above, as well as for those not usually included in our community college stereotypes.

The oldest community college in the United States is Joliet Junior College in Illinois. Founded in 1901 by University of Chicago President William Rainey Harper, Joliet was originally designed as an extension of high school. The early twentieth century was a time of profound demographic change in the United States. New immigrants, former slaves, women, and western homesteaders increasingly wanted access to what had formerly belonged to white, upper class males. Education visionaries, such as Harper, believed junior colleges could fill the gap between high school and traditional colleges— both preparing students for entry to four-year institutions and providing measurable opportunities for those who would go no further.[1]

This broad, somewhat double-minded mission has led to the proliferation of community college systems that have since been described as everything from the “13th and 14th grades”[2] to trade and vocational schools, dumping grounds for remedial students, partners in state university systems, and, according to former President Obama, “an essential part of our prosperity in the future.”[3]

As diverse as the nomenclature attempting to define community colleges are their funding sources. State and federal tax dollars, local property taxes, private charitable foundations, public-private partnerships, and student tuition all play a role in the functioning of roughly 1,200 community colleges serving over thirteen million students in the United States annually.[4]

Because community colleges have often been seen as the “stepchild”[5] of higher education, many Americans do not see community colleges as the breeding ground for future leaders. They are mistaken.

Nearly half (44%) of all college undergraduates in the United States are community college students, including first-time freshman. One third of all college students will transfer at least once in their academic careers. The most common transfer is not from a community college to a four year institution. It’s the opposite. The most common transfer is to a public, two-year institution.[6]

In fact, less than 40% of Americans hold a post-secondary degree of any kind, yet 42% of community college students are first-generation college students. Despite a 2011 AP report that nearly half of all Americans live at low income or poverty levels, over 60% of community college students work fulltime while attending school.[7]

What about those high school graduates directly entering four-year institutions?

Again, the stigma hovering over community colleges belies reality: only 24% of our nation’s high school graduates meet all four ACT college-readiness benchmarks in Math, Science, English, and Reading. Four-year schools routinely see students leave for the smaller class sizes and greater remedial help traditionally offered at community colleges, not to mention the cost savings of an average of 64%. If trends continue those with some college education will be almost as likely to have obtained it at a community college as at a four-year institution, while completion and graduation rates at both will be a serious concern. Americans holding an associates’ degree or higher will stay a minority of the U.S. population, while U.S. demand for employees with certificates or degrees will remain unmet. [8]

How does this translate into leadership?

Community college students enter college older (the median age is 23) and, in a sense, wiser. They are already part of the American workforce. They pay taxes. They often have children. They are aware of their economic status and their need to further their education. They are also aware that the most cost effective way to doing this is through community college. Such students increasingly believe that the political leaders in their lives, including the media, have nothing in common with them and, by extension, should be mistrusted.

Distrust of political institutions runs deep and across party lines at the community college. If the election of President Trump is any indicator of future political battles, would-be leaders in business, education, politics, media, and religion will need to grapple with the new American norm: hardworking, undereducated, low income populations with a distaste for authority.

At the large Midwestern community college where I teach, 45,000 students are spread across four main campuses and the internet. Each campus reflects the demographics of nearby neighborhoods, but all classrooms have something in common: greater diversity than the community as a whole. I routinely teach classes for students who are veterans, Muslims, Christians, agnostics, physically disabled, mentally ill, single parents, English learners, homeschoolers, dual-enrolled high school students, refugees, and high school graduates who are afraid of college debt. I am most touched by students who work all night and come sit in my class the next morning.

In my classes I have retirees, racists, and socialists. I once had a student run straight from jail to my class which he had missed the previous week. I rarely have a student who knows anything about the U.S. Constitution, but almost all support the right to own guns (Sorry, but it’s true.) My colleagues and I in the history and political science departments possess doctorates and provide students the same education they would receive in their first two years at a public university for a fraction of the cost and in classes a tenth the size.

As one colleague pointedly told me when I once complained about what I considered the unique challenges of my community-college classroom: “Joy, this is America.”

So, the short answer to the question, “Who are community college students?” You are.

[1] Eduardo Martí. America’s Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap (Albany, NY: Hudson Whitman Excelsior College Press, 2016), 12–16.

[2] Ibid., 15.

[3] Allison L. Palmadessa, “America’s College Promise: Situating President Obama’s Initiative in the History of Federal Higher Education Aid and Access Policy,” Community College Review Vol. 45, Issue 1 (2017), 62.

[4] Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation’s Future, a Report From the 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges (American Association of Community Colleges, 2012), 8.

[5] President Obama, qtd. In Palmadessa, 63.

[6] Reclaiming, 8. Christopher Baldwin with Richard L. Alfred and Debbie L. Sydow, The Completion Agenda in Community Colleges: What it is, Why it Matters, and Where It’s Going (Lanham, Mass: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), 71.

[7] Baldwin, 2; Reclaiming, viii, 8.

[8] Reclaiming, viii, 8–10.